In an interview with the BBC yesterday, former Bush adviser Karl Rove defended the administration’s use of waterboarding, saying that he was “proud” that Bush “used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists and gave us valuable information.” “Yes, I’m proud that we kept the world safer than it was, by the use of these techniques,” said Rove. “They’re appropriate, they’re in conformity with our international requirements and with US law.” Watch it:

In a separate part of Rove’s interview with the BBC, he invoked a familiar and misleading argument to claim that waterboarding is not torture. “U.S. military personnel go through waterboarding every year in special training courses on survival and escape,” said Rove.

Massachusetts could elect senator who supports waterboarding

The Republican state senator vying to fill the Senate seat recently vacated by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) says he doesn’t believe waterboarding — where a suspect is effectively temporarily drowned — is torture.

State senator Scott Brown’s candidacy has taken Massachusetts by storm and political analysts by surprise. Until recently, Democratic state attorney Martha Coakley was considered a shoe-in for the position. But Massachusetts independents have apparently grown so frustrated with Democrats in Congress, and so tepid on Coakley’s candidacy, that they may send a Republican to the Senate who seems to contravene many of the state’s apparently liberal ideals.

At a press conference in early January, for example, Brown said that the US should continue to employ waterboarding against terrorist suspects, a technique considered torture for which the US executed Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Speaking of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, the Nigerian attempted “Christmas bomber,” Brown said that the would-be terrorist should be subject to “our rules of engagement and laws of war,’’ and not be tried in civilian courts.

Noted the Boston Globe, “Brown asserted that waterboarding does not constitute torture, but he did not specifically say Abdulmutallab should be subjected to waterboarding.

Former US President George W. Bush with his Lithuanian counterpart, Prime Minister Valdas Adamkus in Vilnius in 2002: “They were happy to have our ear.”

As Americans continue to debate the torture era of the Bush administration, a new report has emerged about the alleged existence of a third secret prison used by the CIA in Europe. According to ABC News, the CIA operated a “black site” prison in Lithuania until the end of 2005.

Following reports on “black site” prisons in Poland, ABC News is now reporting that a third jail existed in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. According to the report, as many as eight prisoners were held there for at least one year.

The United States is believed to have used the third black site prison in Europe to hold high-value al-Qaida suspects after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to question them using “special interrogation techniques.” These included the simulated drowning of prisoners through the practice known as waterboarding. With the development, the debate in America over government interrogation techniques and torture appears to be taking on a greater European dimension.

Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.

In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The CIA’s $1,000 a Day Specialists on Waterboarding, Interrogations

The New Focus on Two Retired Military Psychologists Called the ‘Architects’ of the CIA’s Techniques

ABC News- By BRIAN ROSS, MATTHEW COLE, and JOSEPH RHEEApril 30, 2009

As the secrets about the CIA’s interrogation techniques continue to come out, there’s new information about the frequency and severity of their use, contradicting an 2007 ABC News report, and a new focus on two private contractors who were apparently directing the brutal sessions that President Obama calls torture.

According to current and former government officials, the CIA’s secret waterboarding program was designed and assured to be safe by two well-paid psychologists now working out of an unmarked office building in Spokane, Washington.

Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell, former military officers, together founded Mitchell Jessen and Associates.

Both men declined to speak to ABC News citing non-disclosure agreements with the CIA. But sources say Jessen and Mitchell together designed and implemented the CIA’s interrogation program.

Recently, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with some students at Stanford University, where she is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute. When a student asked whether Rice had authorized torture, she refused to take responsibility, saying only that she “conveyed the authorization of the administration.” She added that, “by definition,” once the president authorized “enhanced interrogations,” they were automatically legal:

Q: Is waterboarding torture?

RICE: The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations under the Convention Against Torture. So that’s — And by the way, I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency, that they had policy authorization, subject to the Justice Department’s clearance. That’s what I did.

Q: Okay. Is waterboarding torture in your opinion?

RICE: I just said, the United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture. And so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.

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